When Meetings Meet the 1980s

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By Daniel Metz, Specialist, Web Marketing | Jan 28, 2013

This is what happens when meeting professionals stop attending sessions and start dancing at Hard Rock Live Orlando.

Face-to-face experiences give attendees opportunities to get away and get business done. They sit next to each other in education sessions. They shake hands and exchange business cards. And at Convening Leaders in Orlando, they showed off an affinity for music from the 1980s.

PCMA’s Party With a Purpose did more than raise $25,000 for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Florida. With Austin’s own The Spazmatics on stage at Hard Rock Live Orlando, it also gave planners and suppliers a chance to embrace a decade that brought us the moonwalk, the safety dance and the cabbage patch.

If you love the 1980s, you aren’t alone from what I saw on Monday. Here’s a look at three songs that brought attendees face-to-face with some serious dance moves.

1) Track: Take On Me

Artist: A-Ha

You probably remember receiving a postcard for Convening Leaders that simply read “Big Ah Has Live Here.” Well, another kind of A-Ha lived in Orlando, too, and it’s in the form of this masterpiece of a pop song released in 1985.

2) Track: Jesse’s Girl

Artist: Rick Springfield

Based on the roar of approval that reverberated against the walls of Hard Rock Live when the Spazmatics played the first chords of this song, it seems that everyone in the meeting industry actually knows both Jesse and his girl.

3) Track: Baby Got Back

Artist: Sir-Mix-a-Lot

While this hip hop classic does not technically classify as an ‘80s song, this bass-thumping jam makes its way on to this list for one very important reason: it’s one of Brad Lewis’ favorite songs. When he’s not leading the way forward for the PCMA Education Foundation, you can find Brad reciting these lyrics. Seriously, he recited them to me on a bus in Orlando.

On behalf of everyone at PCMA, thank you for attending PWAP, contributing to some incredible causes and of course, demonstrating your love for pop, dance and New Wave jams.